Improving mental and physical health & wellbeing

• ParkPlay provides opportunities to be physically active that people haven’t found elsewhere. Older people feel welcome, parents don’t need to find childcare and children who don’t enjoy or aren’t able to access the other opportunities. The average number of days doing physical activity rose from 3.19 for non-participants and those who had just started to 4.03 for ParkPlayers.
• Well-being is a key impact; by bringing people together it has the twin benefits of getting active, which is beneficial for mental health, and giving ParkPlayers the opportunity to chat to others from the area who may be facing similar challenges to them, giving a feeling that people are not alone.
• State of Life used the Wellby to calculate the social value of ParkPlay, They estimated that in terms of wellbeing improvements, ParkPlay could be worth between £4.6m – £18.2m annually (based on current scale and investment) with a social return on investment of £30 for every £1 spent.
• Life satisfaction, happiness, feelings of worthwhile and self-reported health were all positively associated with attending ParkPlay. For life satisfaction in particular, they found that the more frequently someone attends ParkPlayer, the higher their life satisfaction is likely to be.

“Mental health is a big thing, particularly at the moment. And I think a lot of them come along to get out in the open, jump around, talk to people. Some people it’s the only socialising they actually get.“ (PlayLeader)

Community Development & Cohesion

• ParkPlay brings the whole community together every Saturday which provides new opportunities for people to volunteer and support each other. Intergenerational play breaks down barriers between different individuals and groups and builds new relationships.
• ParkPlay is by the community for the community with clear guidance, training and support: As opposed to ‘top down’ approaches which impose solutions onto communities or ‘bottom up’ approaches which leave communities to develop their own solutions, ‘joint effort’ working uses the knowledge and skills of both communities and ‘the system’.
• ParkPlay also aims to be accessible to all ages and, again, the data suggests that they are achieving this. And over 80% of survey respondents said that they attend ParkPlay with family members and 15% said that they attend with friends.
• For Essex ParkPlays, an average of 63% of attendees are aged under 14 and nationally, almost a quarter of registered ParkPlayers who have attended at least one session are aged 45 or over. The inter-generational nature of ParkPlay was noted at an observation of a Colchester ParkPlay.

Raising up local, trusted people & employment opportunities to revitalize the area.

In communities of greatest inequality & need.

• ParkPlay has trained over 300 PlayLeaders and volunteers across the country building confidence, leadership skills and employability. ParkPlay aims to be inclusive and specifically targets those who find it harder to be active.
• State of Life found that  67.8% live in an area of deprivation (IMD 1-4) and over a third (36.8%) live in one of the 20% most deprived areas in England.
• More than 20% of ParkPlayers reported having a limiting disability and 18.3% said they are from an Asian, Black, Mixed or Other ethnic background.

“What I found really interesting, was that there was another physical activity session happening on the other side of the park. It looked like all the kids involved were having a great time, but the adults were all stood on the sidelines, rather than joining in like the adults had at ParkPlay.” (Researcher)